Just Say Goodbye helps start an important conversation on the urgent national issue of teen suicide and serves as a wakeup call for friends and family who may not recognize the warning signs of struggle.

After years of abuse from his father and bullying at school, Jesse Peterson confides his plan to commit suicide during summer vacation to his best friend, Sarah.

The teenage pals, who have been a safe haven for one another since childhood, are grappling with teen angst, abuse and much more. Jesse (Max MacKenzie) and Sarah Morin (Katerina Eichenberger) take us on an emotional ride in the ultra low-budget film from first-time filmmaker Matt Walting, who produced the funeral drama for only $15,ooo.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, teen suicide is the second leading cause of death for ages 10-24; and more teens and young adults die from suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza and chronic lung disease combined.

Each day in the United States, an estimated 3,000 high school teens attempt suicide, and four out of five teens who attempt suicide have given clear warning signs to friends, family members or others who they are close to on a regular basis. All of this is especially timely because May is National Mental Health Awareness Month.

In the movie, we learn that Jesse’s mother took her own life when he was just 6 years old. Instead of his father stepping up and providing him with the loving, nurturing home he so desperately needs, his dad turns to the bottle and becomes an abusive alcoholic, who emotionally bullies his introverted son. Jesse’s beautiful and intricate drawings and close friend Sarah are his only means of comfort.

“I was drawn to this movie because I feel it’s such an important topic that really hasn’t been talked about that much,” MacKenzie, 21, exclusively explained to Parade.com.

“Jesse immediately resonated with me and it feels good to be able to touch people in a very personal way so that maybe they will feel a connection to these characters and somehow apply it in their own lives.”

Max MacKenzie as Jesse Peterson in the poignant new movie Just Say Good-bye(Courtesy Amazon)

What is the overwhelming message you wanted to convey in this movie?

I think a key is to understand that you don’t know what someone’s situation is, so we were really trying to strike a chord with people who see our movie. If you saw kids like Sarah and Jesse talking to each other from a distance in the cafeteria, but you couldn’t hear what they were talking about, you would just think everything’s normal. So this movie shows us there’s a lot going on within Jesse’s mind, but you wouldn’t know that unless you’re up close watching him like the viewer is. This is a topic I felt really we needed to give some major attention to.

Anyone who has been bullied in high school knows how Jesse felt when these bullies made Jesse’s already tenuous life even more difficult. We could identify with the ridiculous reasons kids are picked on in school.

Absolutely, any little thing to beat someone down these bullies will take the opportunity, and sometimes it can be really hard.

How did you get in the mindset of a teen planning his suicide? And having his friendship with Sarah and his artwork as his only reason to live.

Sarah and his artwork are keeping him going…. And Sarah is leaving for the summer to spend time with her father and he doesn’t feel like his art is going to get him anywhere. The mindset I get into doing this role is asking myself, “How would I feel if I had two reasons to live and half of that reason was ditching me.” It was really challenging.

So, what do you feel the message is, especially since the movie came out in May, which is Mental Health Awareness Month?

The core of the movie is that all of us are living in a really tough time. There’s a lot of negativity in the world right now. There has always been negativity, but it feels so much more accessible with social media. Everyone seems a lot less friendly, so I just want the message of the movie to be that you just don’t know what someone’s life is like at home or outside of your involvement. You’re only seeing someone for the one part of the day, and you don’t know what’s going on in their head, and you don’t know what struggles they have every single day.

What should people take away from this movie?

I want the world to be a more loving place, just treat everybody, with not only respect but the kind of like friendliness, love and respect that you would want to be treated with because that can just make your day so much better. And while that doesn’t fix any sort of mental health issue that people might be struggling with, I just want everybody to be more loving to one another. You just don’t know what’s going on in someone’s life ever, even if it’s a close friend. Some people just bottle things up, and you just don’t know what they are going through, so it’s important to be more loving with everybody; even strangers. I think that’s something that seems to be fading away a little.

You had a personal frame of reference from high school.

Yes. I lost a friend to suicide myself. We were sophomores and she was 15 or 16 years old. So, to get in that mindset, it’s just being able to connect it to some of the things that have happened in my life and then keeping that realism to this is kind of a hidden epidemic that sometimes people who are contemplating suicide really seem the happiest, and so when it happens it’s very surprising in that way. Playing this role was kind of just basing Jesse off a lot of the traits that you’ll see in very normal high school kids. And while Jesse doesn’t come across as someone very happy, he’s someone who’s pretty much ignored by most people except for Sarah and his bully, and so that’s kind of his life, and that creates such a challenge, so I had to relate to that. You know, how would that be for me? And I was just able to do it pretty easily because of my experience with everything else, and I was in high school at the time when we shot the movie.

Are there still the cliques, the popular kids and the bullies, the jocks and the nerds?

I was in public school until my freshman year of high school, and then I transferred to a boarding school for the rest of high school. I would say that there are the cliques’ everyone remembers, it takes a different shape at boarding school. The jocks are really just the hockey players, and in the scaled-down atmosphere, the bullying isn’t so much like “give me your lunch money” kind of thing. Instead, everyone is picking on people, but they try to do it in a playful way. In public high school, I saw a lot of bullying in the bigger surroundings, and it seems like it was much easier for people to get away with it there.

How did you and Katerina, who played Sarah, get along? The friendship vibe seemed genuine, so tell me about working with her.

She was an absolute pleasure to work with; it was such a gift. We actually had to get to know each other very quickly. We shot a kind of intimate scene on the first day, and so, our first day on the set together, we just kind of had to get comfortable with each other right away.

A trick in acting that I have with creating good chemistry with somebody is to zero in on one thing that you like about them, and just let that aspect drive your connection with them, whatever the scene might be. With Katerina, it was so immediate because she’s just such a positive energy that I was very much able to just plug into that. We didn’t have a chemistry test. So, it was a little bit of luck and a good eye for casting from Layla O’Shea, the screenwriter, and Matt Walting, our director. The connection was there right away; she’s just a very likable person.

Do you have a specific career plan?

This was my first movie. I work mostly in TV, and I’d just love to be able to continue to work with exciting people, and not be like a cliché actor, but just to be involved in extremely exciting projects. I love what I do so much, and it can be so frustrating because it’s such a fickle industry, but for the times that I do get to work, it’s just the absolute best. I would love to primarily continue working in TV and film.

What else have you been working on?

I’m shooting a TV show for Amazon right now. I can’t talk too much about it, but it’s called The Hunt, and it stars Al Pacino and Logan Lerman. I’ve had to cut my hair for it, so I’ve got this new short haircut. I can’t say much, but it’s going to be awesome!

What is it like working with Al Pacino?

I can’t say much, but he is definitely an icon.

Lastly, why do you want teens and their parents to see this movie? What do you hope they’ll get out of it?

I hope that if a teenager feels like he or she is struggling and they don’t know how to really communicate that because there’s such a stigma with mental health problems. I hope that this movie can help people feel like they can openly talk about it with their loved ones so that they can get as much help, support and love as they need and deserve.

AMG/Parade Digital

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